Benito has lost the confidence of Shasta County

A district attorney needs a passion for justice, a devotion to the victims of crime, an understanding of the law, and the skill to make the most of ever-scarcer resources seeing criminal cases through the courts. On those counts, Jerry Benito has done an admirable job as Shasta County’s chief prosecutor.

But the representative of “the people” in the criminal-justice system also needs the trust of the community, the public’s confidence in the DA’s character and wise judgment. That trust, in the past year or so, has all but evaporated.

The most vivid sign is the avid backing of Shasta County’s legal community — the people closest to the system — for Benito’s challenger, former District Attorney Steve Carlton. Benito argues that it is the defense lawyers who are out to unseat him because he’s too tough on crime for their taste, but the fact is the opposition to him among the bar is far broader. And it includes all of his living predecessors as district attorney, as well as a large number of prosecutors who’ve turned to criminal defense only after leaving the DA’s service under Benito’s tenure.

Carlton points to high turnover among experienced lawyers in the office as a sign of Benito’s bad management. There’s nothing in itself wrong with prosecutors coming and going. And Benito, in explaining some of the change, points to policy shifts where he had to lay down the law, so to speak, and assert his prerogative as the elected district attorney. Nobody can reasonably argue with him there.

But then he goes on to repeatedly knock his former employees as “lazy,” “incompetent” and “dead wood.” This is how he treats people in public. How does he act in private?

The public gained one telling glimpse earlier this year when e-mails revealed the comically petty standoff between the district attorney and the administration of the Shasta Superior Court over security procedures. Benito for a time refused to even enter the courthouse for business meetings, because he had to remove his shoes — like every other attorney — to pass through the metal detectors.

Combative streaks are not uncommon in the legal world. It would hardly matter if Benito showed sound judgment in pressing legal cases. Increasingly, that’s not so clear. Just to pick a few of many high-profile cases:

Benito pressed manslaughter charges in juvenile court against a teenage friend of Shelby Lynn Allen in connection with Allen’s December 2008 alcohol-poisoning death. It was a case that seemed to have far more to do with sending a message than with the law — and Judge Dan Flynn ultimately dismissed all the counts, but not before a young woman had been put through the legal ringer for nearly a year after her friend’s death.

In 2008, Benito openly lambasted Superior Court Judge Anthony Anderson for releasing an accused child molester from jail pending trial, frightening the public with a tale of a court that had freed a dangerous criminal to prey on children. The next year, a jury acquitted that defendant in less than two hours.

Prosecutors don’t win every case, of course, but the district attorney’s job is to weigh evidence and bring criminal charges as the law merits. In his prosecutorial zeal, it increasingly seems he loses perspective. Ironically, it’s a case in which he declined to press charges — the nightclub punching death of Adam Martinez last year — that has brought out the loudest detractors among the public, though not, notably, among lawyers. That tough case was bound to bring Benito grief one way or another — but hard legal calls are easier for the public to swallow when the DA has a reserve of trust. Benito’s account is just empty.

Carlton spends a little too much time looking in the rearview mirror to his term as DA, in the 1980s, and not enough looking forward. He’s sometimes seemed unprepared as a candidate, and lacks Benito’s obvious passion for the job. Indeed, Carlton says he’d rather retire, but that the need to oust Benito is so pressing that he stepped up to lead the charge.

What he does have is decades of experience in criminal law, on both sides. Critically, he enjoys a deep well of personal and professional respect that has led a huge swath of the community to rally behind him.

Shasta County needs a district attorney who holds the public’s confidence, which Benito has lost. Carlton will bring the right change at the right time.